This was the packing challenge of the trip - how to fit all our stuff into one 21kg bag and one hand luggage bag to meet the flying requirements from Belem to Manuas. Good time to lighten our loads by blessing the new Iris Fortaleza Missions Base with things we no longer needed!
After a 24 hour bus ride to Belem which actually took 27 hours we had an 8 hour layover at the airport before a midnight flight to Manaus, only to wait another hour and a half for two more members of our team to join us who'd found a cheap flight direct from Fortaleza to Manaus which only took four hours!! Well done Ted and Caitlyn :) Nothing like arriving at 3am to the hostel, hot and humid with air that doesn't really work. Welcome to a jungle town!
Wednesday morning and the research for a way to get into the Amazon began. We came in faith and by the leading of the Holy Spirit, trusting that He would direct us to where He would have us go. After much running around and false leads we got connected with Josiah, a wild YWAM missionary from Alabama (Josiah) who has a heart like ours, to share the gospel with the unreached people groups deep in the jungle.
Saturday and we were on the Amazon River in a canoe heading to the Rouxinol village with the Barasaua trible. One year ago this tribe was unreached, but now thanks to Josiah going to them they know Jesus and have YWAM missionaries working with them on a daily basis. We connected with a group of 8 YWAM girls who were in the village doing their DTS training.
Trekking into the jungle
The jungle was hot, humid and a place where a day felt like a week. It was a great few days but very hot and very humid. By the end we were all struggling to function and I think we all had had heat stroke and dehydration to some level. Highlights include fishing with Santiago, the chief of the tribe. He is such an amazing man, I really enjoyed our time with him, and he enjoyed my obvious dislike of putting live worms as bait on my fishing hook, not to mention my strong dislike of fish, on my plate, dead or alive. Yes, going fishing on the Amazon river was another opportunity to do something I have a fear of! During this year God has had me on a journey of conquering some personal fears. So starting with some physical ones, in the last few weeks I've successfully made use of saunas, been hangliding over Rios, fishing with Santiago and dissected a raw chicken in the jungle. So far the chicken experience was the most traumatic!!
Fishing in the Amazon
The tribe performed their cultural dance for us which was great fun, even when Santiago asked me to partner dance with him!
Santiago leading the tribal dance with me
On Monday we took the canoes up the river to hike to another village, the Gaudino Brancinho village with Piratapuxa tribe. This tribe was a lot more spread out, as I discovered when without any warning we were whisked off to invite people to that evening's church service, nothing like hiking an hour and a half through the Amazon jungle in the midday heat in my flip flops. i shouldn't complain though, Joanna (Santiago's wife) trekked with us, also in flip flops, crossing rivers via tree branches, with her 13 month baby on her hip or breastfeeding. Impressive. My hero woman of the group.
Carrying the baby along a log over the river
Stopping at a house to invite them to the church service,
and sitting down for a quick rest while we're at it!!
One of the people we invited to church was an old women named Nasaria. Somehow in the midst of sharing Jesus with her, praying for the pain in her knees and inviting her to church we offered to come plant her land with casava the next day. So off we trekked into the jungle first thing on Tuesday morning in the boiling heat to plant casava for her. It was back breaking working, not least because it felt like 40 degrees by 9am, but every time just as we thought we'd finished she'd bring another basket of Casava roots for us to plant! It was never ending!
Planting casava is hard work!
That evening at church we prayed for healing in her knees again (I'm not surprised she had pain in her knees considering her age and the amount of hard physical labour she's done in her life!), and when I asked her how she was feeling she said all the pain had gone! Praise God!
Another weird thing in the jungle,
a chicken right next to the toilet!
By Thursday we had to head back to Manaus as we were invited to be guest speakers at a conference mobilising missionaries at Moises' church. The conference was over the weekend and was an interesting time, a different style of ministry to the way we roll but a good time where people's hearts were stirred up. Miracles took place as well, notably Phillippe who got out of his wheelchair and walked. He had been injured in a near fatal car accident a year before and since then had been in a wheelchair. There were some quite well known guest speakers there, a famous Brazilian pastor and evangelist from Ghana, so having us be included as the guests of honour was something else. It was a bit overwhelming when we'd arrive at the sessions if there weren't seats for us the ushers would ask the teenagers to get up and move so we could have their seats. We kept saying no no it's fine really, we don't people to move because of us, but what could we do.
Sleeping arrangements for the weekend were interesting. The 8 of us stayed in a one bedroomed house belonging to somebody (we never met the people who lent us their house!), plus Santiago and his family from the house, so we had about 16-20 people sleeping in a one bedroom house. Interesting. And I should mention Manaus is very hot and humid so that many people plus not so much AC and lots of mosquitoes... plus jungle people get up REALLY early!!! And our team is not made up of early risers :)
Monday and us 3 girls headed up to Venezuela. The boys had to wait in Manuas until Ben and Taylor's passports came back from the embassy (they needed extra pages for the visas we'd be needing for the remaining countries). With the end time of our journey looming, and our wider team being split in many smaller groups (by this time we had us in Manaus, 2 girls flying into Manuas in the next few days, another group taking a boat down the Amazon to Manaus and then the birthing team in Fortaleza with Tanya who was by now very very close to being 9 months pregnant), we'd arranged to all meet in Georgetown, Guyuna, by 1 November as the first half of the team would be flying home on or close to the 5th November. With us having the pioneering spirits that we had, we planned to squeeze Venezuela in the next week before meeting in Georgetown. There were many times we weren't sure if we'd actually make it (money, a lot of travel, limited time, going ahead of the team) but Tuesday 23rd November and we crossed the border. This much travelling was quite a task even given how much we usually travel, for example over the last 11 nights we'd changed accommodation 8 times.
But our vision was there and we definitely had enough motivation so Monday night and Natalie, Caitlin and I were on an overnight bus to Venezuela. First and only border crossing for the team done by girls alone might I add!
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